


come, I am calling for you

by silverscream



Category: All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness
Genre: And before i knew it, Elena you have ruined my life with this song, F/M, I Don't Even Know, I swear it just came up on shuffle, Introspection, It's 4.30 am, this happened, word vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 02:47:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverscream/pseuds/silverscream
Summary: "io ti insegnerò l’amoreche non sa di Chiesa e incensoe non ha nessun pudore."alternatively, if Ysabeau were honest.





	come, I am calling for you

"Sometimes," she whispers roughly, as if the hand of God himself were choking the breath out of her lungs; the expression of it, the feeling behind the word coming out almost as loudly as a shout, "sometimes I think I can do without him. My heart does not ache, my hands do not tremble, I do not lose sleep over the sound of his heartbeat, and I think to myself, yes, now, finally, now I can finally be alone."

A lost gleam comes then to her eyes, illuminating them from within, making them stand out against the bruised shadows beneath them.

"Then it comes," and a smile comes to her lips, bitten red and it is the sort of smile that hurts, "the missing.

"I feel like I am missing a limb. No, not that. A single limb lacking would be the kinder fate, perhaps." Her smile stretches, heartbreak and ecstasy both tangled around the curling corners of her mouth, "I feel like the heart in me is missing, while my lungs demand its beat for air and my legs demand its blood to move."

She is looking at something beyond him, beyond the light of dusk, beyond the world as it is now.

"It is a visceral pain that grabs me, and it does not let go. I feel it staring me down from the edges of my vision, I feel it haunting me at night, and at sunrise and at noon. I feel it grasping my heart with warm fingers and whispering in my ear, to return.

"I belittle it, for what it is worth. You would think it passing, a flight of fancy, a part of my consciousness twisting a wishful memory into longing, into wanting to go where I know I cannot find anything but heartache. It is not. I wanted it to be that, and often. It is as daunting as it is old, and I do not know a time when it has not come over me.

"There are times when it comes after a week, or a year, or even a century. There are times when I think it will not come at all, right before it strikes me to the core, truer than any arrow or bolt or bullet ever could be.

"And when it does come, I fight it. I fight it until it consumes me, until it eats me whole, from the tips of my hairs, to the marrow of my bones, and I long."

Her eyes close at that, as if reminiscing

"I've fought this longing for so many times, and to no avail. I've missed children, I've missed friends, I've missed lovers. I've missed the living and the dead and those who were neither"

She look up, certainty and tears gathering blood red at the corners of her eyes, showing perhaps, a mirror of her soul, the shape of it so very bright in her luminous gaze. An exhale and she continues, "but I've not longed for someone, for someplace or something like I do for him.

"When that cursed feeling comes and stays, I go ahead and make to ignore it," that lovely face curls into a terrible, fearsome and sharp snarl, "but it grows and consumes and not breathing seems to me to hurt so far less than not seeing him.

"It begins softly, an idle thought, mayhaps a stray memory gilding the sunlight in some hall or another; after that, a habit of his that I happen to remember. A comparison that oughtn't be takes form in my mind, between him and another, like how he would hold a writing pen just so as opposed to that, how his fingers would have pale marks wrapped around them when he took his rings off before bed - first the signet, bearing our seal, then the one with a crystal he found near home, when he was still a child; then whichever ones he wore to impress the creature he met that day, and finally, always the very last, his wedding ring, the old thing its own mother mightn't recognize, for it no longer has its original shape, or maybe even half of its gleam -

"And I remain standing like a fool, staring at his hands in my mind's eye, eager to see the rest of him as well, before I can catch myself and remember my surroundings."  
  
She shudders violently, her slight frame trembling whole, knees and fingertips and teeth.

"I hate him, for a while. I hate his cheek and his idealism, and his sense of duty. I hate the way he loses himself for some noble cause," she rolls her eyes at that derisively, "the way he makes everything his with a single, purposeful look, or a simple word." A pause, "Or a name."

"He is terrible, you see. He is selfless, and practical and sickeningly charismatic, and the combined whole makes up the very worst sort of man. Creature. Being. Devil."

"Everything reminds me of him, then. An offhand comment on some clockwork device, a verse of poetry that does not match the rhyme, or its intended rhythm. A worn weapon, an aged wine, the branches and leaves of trees whispering in the wind.

"The torment begins with that, because I know him better than I know myself, and no waiting body compares to him, no woman or man or daemon or fucking witch can make me forget what he feels like around and inside me, no choir can make me forget the lilt of his voice, how damn rich the sound of it feels, shouting and whispering and singing.

"And when I long for him, when I weep bitterly for the memory of him, when I crave him from the deepest pits of the hell that is my soul; in slithers the knowledge that he is waiting. The knowledge that, no matter what war he'd be in the middle of crafting, no matter which king or priest or god he entertained or fucked or loved at that moment, were I to come home, he would forget their name in a heartbeat, and know only me."

  
The smile grows wider on her face as the words tumble out of her, heave out of her chest and empty it somewhat, ease its burden. She wets her lips with her tongue, suddenly parched.

"It's a two-sided curse, that, and I fear he hates me for it as much as I do him. It's not fate or duty or even the memory of the choice I made to marry him, which begs me to return. It's simply that I've not felt anything quite as brightly, as vividly, as truly as I do when I am near him, and that is because of who he is, and who I am.

"But I digress; let me return to what happens when the hate has passed and the urge to go to him blinds me to anything and everything more with each passing moment." she frowns, bittersweet remembrance twisting her features, "At that point, the only thing keeping me away is the heartbreak I'll see hidden behind his eyes, masked soundly, as he thinks he is so capable of doing. He cannot hide it from me, not really. That, I do not think he knows, but still.

"I am well aware that it'll be there, and that I'll have been the cause of it. And that is, perhaps, my reason's last defense against him. Because I know I've hurt him, and before the century turns, I'll perhaps hurt him again. By the time I no longer care for my own heart, his is the only thing in the world for which I can muster anything resembling concern. I cannot yet decide what that makes me, selfless or selfish? But it does not matter, for regardless of how long that battle wages inside me, in the end I always turn my back towards the sun, and I always pick up my feet and make my way, long or short or maybe arduous, to him."

Ysabeau chuckles, wrapping her arms around herself.

"He smiles when he sees me, sometimes. He shouts or cries or laughs. And at that moment, I cannot fathom leaving him again. It does not matter if I do it, eventually. Or that he might. I could not give half a shit that he might leave me next, because, for what that moment is worth, there is nothing else quite like it. Like the gleam of recognition and hate and adoration I see in him, damned things echoing inside me. The familiarity of it all, perhaps followed by something wicked and new, which I am eager to drink up."

A fond, exasperated grin, softened by the heat in her eyes, gentle and knowing.

"And even if he left next, I think I know he would return. I would know it in the back of my heart, I would know it in my bones. And then it'll all have been worth it."

**Author's Note:**

> This song hates me. No matter. Here, have a lil tidbit of introspective Ysabeau. Or all the things she would say, if the hurt got strong enough. Yes, this happens before the 20th century. I am evil that way.
> 
> Both the title and the summary come from Gio di Tonno's "Che cos'è questo fuoco". Which I have not been listening to on repeat for the past 2 hrs. Nope. Not me.
> 
> Regardless, do let me know what you thought of this :3
> 
> Cheers


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